Streets of Rogue – Life, Love and the Pursuit of Chicken Nuggets

Look! Up there in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a temporarily free game!

Personally, I’d take a free game over Superman any day.

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I stumbled across Streets of Rogue towards the end of the free weekend and quickly downloaded it to give it a go. What follows are my first and admittedly limited impressions. If it’s worth buying I’ll give a further and more in-depth review in the future. If not, well then that’s a review in and of itself. Also, note that this game is currently still in Alpha and as such will obviously change between now and release. Streets of Rogue opens as most over indie rogue likes, a black screen with simple text boxes setting the background for your inevitable death and failure. With a few lame jokes and what I must assume are attempts at being ironic the derelict stage is set. I’ll readily admit I’m a sucker for the 80’s font and soundtrack and the 8-bit art style brings back fond memories of similar titles. The tutorial is your stock standard affair, only with an uncomfortable degree of sarcasm that feels completely out-of-place. Right up until the “Resistance Leader” guiding you explodes. Whoops, spoiler alert. Despite an uneasy introduction, I’m quickly warming to Streets of Rogue, the Resident Evil 4 reference from the shopkeeper tells me everything I need to know about this game. “That would be rude,” says the player character when I suggest reading someone else’s emails. This is the man who ten seconds earlier beat a shopkeeper to death, then punched the corpse until it exploded. Some questionable morals there, friend.

(I took enjoy having a chat about the weather before leaping over a bar and brutally murdering a man) It’s odd to see an 8-bit beat everything up game taking digs at real world issues such as fair treatment of workers and political correctness but Streets of Rogue somehow manages to do it without making it feel forced. It doesn’t really make you think and you know you’re going to beat this poor hapless worker until he explodes because you’re a terrible person but in a way, it’s still a nice little feature. Once you reach the first level of the Slums the game begins in earnest. You’re unleashed upon the unsuspecting populace with whatever weapons and stats come with the class you chose. Your mission is to retrieve a briefcase and destroy a generator. Now you could do this in more ways than I care to count but my personal method involved polluting the ventilation system and breaking a lot of windows. Streets of Rogue is whatever you chose to make of it. Do you want to let prisoners out of their cells and incite a riot? Go ahead. Want to lure an enemy out of a locked room? Fire off a shot or two just outside the door. Want to brutally murder everything and anything you see with no reason or forethought? This is the game for you. I feel like Streets of Rogue manages to create a more open ‘open world’ than most AAA developers lately. You have so many options and the myriad of classes gives you, even more, choices of how to go about completing the goals the resistance gives you. A promising title, Streets of Rogue is currently on Steam Early Access for $13.49 until March 18th I’d personally recommend picking it up. Oh and maybe pick up an extra, or three, for your friends and gather around for some good old-fashioned local co-op (or online Co-op if that’s more your style). Because the only thing more fun than beating up poor innocent people is beating up poor innocent people with your friends.

Expect a full review when this releases. For now, if you want to check out the game you can find it here

7/10

PixelReview recently took some time to explore the gorgeous world of No Man’s Sky, you can read the full review here.